Out Of The Night

OUT OF THE NIGHT

Phyllis Campbell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Phyllis Campbell

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Prologue

Fear walked with Grace on that October night of wind and freezing mist as she moved the bedside table and a chair to make more room for the men from Walker's funeral home. The fear wasn't hers, but it hovered near like some living breathing presence. She knew it was there as surely as she knew that the hands with their once graceful fingers would never again coax beauty from the piano. They still felt warm to the touch, but soon they would be cold, as cold as the night outside the window.

Chief Clark himself had come. After all, the School For The Blind rated only second after the state mental hospital as the town's largest employer.

We'll keep this as quiet as possible, she heard him tell the school superintendent, Harold Grey, as they went down the stairs.

You'll wait for Walker's? Dr. Humphry asked as he took his coat from the back of the chair next to the window and knotted a tan and white wool scarf around his neck.

Of course, she said, handing him his rather shabby bag. You know I always do when the death doesn't occur at the hospital.

Grace, you're an anchor for all of us, he said, and for the first time she noticed how gray he had become, and the slight stoop to his six-foot frame. It seems like only last week that you came back from training and started doing private duty.

Was it an accident? The question was out before she had known she was going to ask it, but if he thought she was out of line asking such a thing, he didn't show it.

Only God knows, he said, and sat back down at the small desk where he had filled out the death certificate. He turned the chair to face her, where she sat on the bench in front of the dressing table.

My opinion? he asked.

She nodded, and clasped her cold hands in her lap.She didn't want to hear the answer, but something made her ask.

No, he said, I don't think it was an accident.

But couldn't she have poured too much without realizing it? After all, she was blind. I've poured out a few drops more than I meant to, only I could see the line in the measure and could pour it back in the bottle. Couldn't it have happened that way? And she realized that she was almost pleading for an accidental overdose.

No, he said sighing. We talked about that, and in the end I measured the doses into seven small bottles, all that I was willing to give her. As I told Harold and Chief Clark, she came to me about a week ago complaining of insomnia, inability to concentrate and bad dreams. God forgive me, I convinced myself that it was pre-wedding jitters.

But couldn't she have forgotten how much she'd taken? she asked, wanting it to be so.

I suppose so, he said, but—

But you don't think so.

Grace, he spoke slowly, there was something wrong there. She was a sensible girl, not the kind given to vapors as my mother would have said. I couldn't find anything physically wrong with her, still there was something wrong, but if you pressed me I couldn't say what it was. I suppose we could fall back on the old explanation of nervous breakdown, which frankly I've never liked. Something was bothering her.

Did you ask her about it? Grace asked.

Yes, but she couldn't come up with an answer. Grace, there was something, something about her eyes, her face. It was almost as though for just a minute, there was somebody else there. I know I'm sounding like a fool, and if my patients heard me say such a thing, they'd head for the hills. Oh, forget it, he said moving toward the door. I'm probably just trying to justify myself.

But you've done nothing wrong, she said, following him into the hall. You treated her, and you took precautions, and it would have been foolish to voice your doubts about her sanity. Nothing would have been gained, and her family would have suffered even more.

I suppose you're right, he said, but, Grace, you didn't see her expression.

She walked with him to the stairs, and watched as he went down slowly.

No, she told herself, she hadn't seen her expression, but she'd seen one like it, and it had been here in this very room, on just such a night with the cold seeping in around the old window frames and a mist freezing on the trees on the front lawn.

I hate to ask you to take this case, Dr. Humphry had told her that afternoon. To put it bluntly, it's a death watch. She's old and frail. She fell this afternoon pushing open a heavy door in the wind. I'm afraid she may have suffered a stroke as well as injury from the fall. She's been unconscious ever since.

Is she in the hospital? she had asked, hoping that her voice sounded brisk and professional. It was her first case after returning from her training in Charlottesville, and if she told the truth, she was a bit nervous.

No, and that's another reason I hate asking you to take this as your first case. She's the superintendent over at the School For The Blind. The school nurse had her carried to her room, and I saw no reason to have her moved to the hospital. They don't use that wing anymore except for her room, of course, and it's rather isolated after the offices downstairs close for the day.

She had known he was right the minute she saw the old woman. She was tiny in the narrow bed, and there was something about death stamped on her almost unwrinkled face. Her long fine hair spread out on the pillow in a white cloud, and Grace found herself gently smoothing it away from her forehead.

She had roused only once before the end which, came around eleven o'clock. It had been about an hour earlier. Grace had been standing at the window looking out at the lights on the campus, seen dimly through the mist. On the nearby railroad, a freight train sent its lonely cry into the night, and was answered by the lonelier howl of a dog.

Where on earth can it be? she had wondered aloud. It sounded as if it was coming from the hall. She knew she should look, but for some reason, nothing could persuade her to open that door.

It had been then that she heard her patient stir. Grace knew she was blind, but it seemed that she was looking toward the sound, and she had never seen such an expression on a face. Years later, standing in that same room, she couldn't explain it. She had seen fear in the faces of the dying, but this woman was angry. It was something more than mere anger. No, there was something more than that. Not even loathing could describe it. Then the other expression took its place, an impression of two people there in the same frail body.

Grace had made herself cross the room to take her hand and speak to her quietly. She hadn't been sure that she was actually conscious until she made the request which, to a young woman still dealing in romantic notions, seemed endearing and harmless. How often in the years to come on nights when the dogs howled had she wished that she had never granted that request. The thing had never touched her personally, of course, but she knew after a while, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

She forced her thoughts back to the present, but she was shivering, and knew it had nothing to do with the cold, although the room was icy. With determination, she shook off the past, and gathered her things. She could wait downstairs for the funeral home. Her young patient was beyond need. As her footsteps disappeared down the curving stairs, the troubled atmosphere in the room settled as the presence that hovered there slept along with the figure on the bed, slept and waited again.

Chapter 1

2007

There had been a heavy frost in the September night, and the sun seemed to shine on a dying world.

Chris pulled her light coat closer around her, shivering. It seemed much colder here than it had in Richmond. She stood listening to the sound of the taxi growing fainter until she could no longer hear it. A helicopter thacked overhead, and she shivered again, thinking about the copter which had lifted her from the wreckage of her Accord. It had taken them two hours to extricate her, and by the time they pulled her free, she was barely conscious. As they loaded her aboard the copter, she had wondered in a strange detached way if she was going to die. When they told her she would be blind for the rest of her life, she'd wished for death until a rehab counselor, Ann Davenport, had shocked her back to life with a combination of stern words and love.

All her life, she'd heard that when one of the senses is gone, the others automatically take up its work. What a crock that was, she thought as she stood listening trying to remember the raised map of the campus they'd shown her at the Rehab Center. She could testify to just how much of a crock it was, and a lot more besides. She had learned and relearned a lot about it in the past year since that night over a year ago when a patch of black ice had turned her world of bright dreams into a nightmare of darkness.

Of course, the other senses learn to take over some of the duties of the eyes, they have to, but it certainly doesn't happen overnight. She had the memory of bumps, not to mention spilled food, and just about anything else that could be spilled or dropped, to prove the point. Well, this wasn't getting her from point A. to point B., but still she stood, listening, sensing, even smelling her new surroundings.

She caught the tang of freshly cut grass, and a hint of some late blooming flower. Beneath the more pleasant fragrances, she caught the dark scent of leaf mold, seeming to speak of death and the coming winter. Leaves moved along the pavement like little frightened animals scurrying to safety. Somewhere off to the right, however, she could hear the scrape of a rake as they were captured and consigned to the finality of plastic and flame.

You can't stand here all day, she told herself taking her folding cane from the outside pocket of her tote bag.

She knew that straight in front of her should be a flight of ten steps leading to a walk running from left to right. She could smell the box hedge which ran parallel with the walk, and which, if she followed it, should take her to another walk to her right that would take her to Main Hall.

She moved her cane in an arc in front of her, and bless the angel that watches over the blind, there indeed was the walk to the right. As she moved along the walk, she wondered if she would ever get over the usually unfounded fear that things wouldn't be where they were supposed to be, and the feeling of relief and joy when, after all, there they were.

To her left she could hear the sound of a fountain accompanied by the sound of someone humming an old hymn, she decided, as she stopped for a minute to listen. It sounded like an old man, she thought, and for some reason the cracked old voice and the splash of water seemed to kindle a spark of what she could only call hope somewhere deep in her being. She would make it, and again she told herself that others had made it. It seemed, easier, though, there where young people had studied and worked and succeeded, to believe that she would triumph over this strange world of darkness into which she had been plunged. She would do it!

She had reached the flight of twenty steps that led to the columned porch of Main Hall, when she heard someone loping along the walk behind her.

Wait and I'll go up with you, he called, a deep voice with just a hint of a Southern accent.

Member of the bass section, she thought, categorizing him in her usual way, something she'd done since she was six and sung in her first chorus. Somebody come to shepherd the blind wanderer home. She hated it when people did that. Why couldn't they just ask if she needed help!

No thank you. That won't be necessary, she said in what her friends called her teacher voice.

No, I didn't think it would be necessary, but I'm heading that way myself, and it seems silly for both of us to have to open that hulking door. Have it your own way, though. I can sit here on the steps and wait till you get in if that's what you want. I aim to please, and to her amazement, down he plopped. And in her mind's eye, she saw an expression of mock drama on what she thought of as a boyish face, tanned and perhaps with a slightly crooked nose. Later she was surprised to learn that she'd been right, right down to the nose.

By the way, I'm Don Richards, he said, and she heard him unwrapping what smelled like chocolate. Have a bite of almond Hershey?

No, thank you, she said, beginning to feel a bit silly. After all, why shouldn't he want to help her, but she was sick to death of helpful people. Still, it was a normal thing for a man to hold a door for a woman, well most of the time it was anyhow.

I work at the Center For Independent Living, he said munching away, and you must be Chris Barnes. There's nobody else left; I mean you're the last to get here.

Yes, I'm Chris, she said starting to hold out her hand, only to realize that what with tote bag, weekend bag and cane she didn't have a free hand to hold out.

You need four of them, he said, hands that is. Here, let me take your weekend bag. I'm glad you brought some things with you. Somehow Amtrak seems to be skilled at separating people from their luggage. Lucy got here day before yesterday, and her luggage finally made it last night. Hope you have better luck.

They told me at the Rehab Center to leave my luggage at the station, she said. Hope that's right.

Yeah, he said starting to walk up the steps beside her. We get the heavier stuff. It's easier for folks coming from the station in a taxi. I'll check after lunch, and if it's there, I'll pick it up. This monster door swings to the right. I have it.

She stood on a runner in what she knew was a large square reception hall as they'd called it when the building was built in the 19th century. The air was warm and smelled of coffee and lemon wax. From the right along the connecting corridor came the sound of voices and the clink of china.

Everybody's at lunch, he said. I have an eleven o'clock at the University, and I'm always late. Hang on a sec, and I'll get Ruth to show you up to your room.

He was just coming in at the same time I was, she thought. She remembered then that Ann had told her that a university student who was finishing his master's degree worked part-time at the Center. He hadn't been lurking around